That is definitely a concern. I can't speak to what's happening elsewhere in the country, but here in B.C., especially in metro Vancouver, the costs of various taxes but also development cost charges, community amenity contributions and a variety of other fees that are levelled on the development of new dwelling units add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the eventual cost.
What's happened over time—and I'm not known as somebody who believes taxes are too low, but Daniel's actually right. We've tilted the municipal finance structure a bit to essentially put a lot of burden on new builds. Although most citizens here would not agree that their property taxes are too low, they are actually quite low relative to the assessed values of the properties. There's a problem there.
Indeed, the federal Minister of Housing got into a spat with some municipalities here in metro Vancouver because, at the same time that they were pleading poverty and saying they wanted to see more affordable housing or any kind of housing come to market, they were ratcheting up further the community amenity contributions and development cost charges.
It's definitely a problem. I don't know that the federal government can fix it, other than linking its own funding to good behaviour at the local level and at the provincial level. That's really the lever that the Government of Canada has. They do not control the behaviour of municipalities or how they finance themselves.